A few years ago we had a close look at the Oxford Comma (‘Comma required before last item’, serial comma, Harvard Comma etc) in Word 2013. We’ll now repeat those tests with the new “Microsoft’s own” grammar system to see if there’s any improvement. Office-Watch.com has already noted that the
Microsoft has restored an important missing part of Word 2016 for Windows; the Grammar and Style checking! It’s available for all Word 2016 for Windows users including the ‘perpetual licence’ users who normally don’t get ‘new’ features. This important improvement hasn’t had the usual Redmond hype, presumably because it’s more
In How to share a single Excel worksheet or tab we explained how to send or share a single Excel worksheet or tab from a larger workbook. That’s OK as a one-off measure to send out a sheet but how can you do it easily as a share or ongoing collaboration?
There’s a new type of infected Office document that can bypass some protections and trick people into installing a keylogger on their computer. A keylogger is software that records each keypress and send it to a hacker. They can use that info to get your login details for many sites
David Ringstrom writing at Accountingweb.com makes some good points about how the shifting versions of Office 2016 can cause trouble. The problem is most acute in Excel 2016 but can happen in Word and PowerPoint too. When you share a workbook or document, the receivers Office has to be compatible
Microsoft has released a new version of Office 2016 for Windows to the ‘Slow’ insiders. This means Office 365 customers have more goodies to look forward to in coming months. You’ll need Office 2016 Version 1612 (Build 7628.2048) or above. The new features, as described by Microsoft are: View and
The latest ‘Slow’ insiders release for Office 2016 has a new feature for shared documents – the Activity view. This pane shows who has saved a shared document on OneDrive, OneDrive for Business or SharePoint. There are ‘Open version’ links offered but these only give errors in our tests. Perhaps
There’s very few security patches this month but the major fix is for Word 2016 for Windows. Alas, as usual, Microsoft tries to overwhelm with a lot of standard phrases leaving key questions unanswered. This months security flaw is similar to many others over the years. A hacked document can
Office-Watch.com ebooks give great value to our readers. The low price is just the start. There’s also free updates to the book available to past and new customers. Real-Time Excel has just been updated to include more chapters and example documents. The update is available now to past purchasers who
If you’re looking for a new PowerPoint background, desktop or screen-saver image, NASA always has something to impress. The latest from NASA and JPL is an image of Earth and the Moon, from Mars. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) needed calibration and pointing it ‘home’ allows that. The brown blob,
A style is a collection of formatting choices combined under a single name. Any word or even a single letter has a collection of formatting settings as well. Font: size, color, bold/italic/underline/strikethrough/subscript/superscript, highlighting and more. Position: Left, Center, Right, Justified. List: bullet, numbering. Line Spacing, Borders, Background color and a
Shared calendars are now supported in the Outlook apps for Apple and Android devices. At this stage, you have to setup the calendar sharing from an Outlook web interface. Both the sharing and acceptance of the share have to be done on the web site. Only view and edit permissions
Excel will support Bitcoin in an upcoming release. According to Microsoft’s roadmap for Excel, Bitcoin support will: “… track, calculate and analyze Bitcoin data using native Bitcoin number formatting options. Feature is first being rolled out to Excel 2016 for Windows, Excel Online, Excel Mobile for Windows and Excel Mobile
We’ll start 2017 with a look at some commonly used characters used in Office but are missing from the standard keyboard. How to insert symbols on a ‘one-off’ basis or insert quickly for more commonly used characters. Degree mark for temperature. Has no special shortcut but you can make one
There’s a piece of malware about that tries to trick Microsoft Office users into ‘activating’ their Office software when there’s really no problem. Here’s how to deal with it if you get caught. Once it’s running, the malware appears ‘on top’ of your screen with a phone number to call.
A dozen different Office security breaches are patched this month, in addition to many for Windows and other MS products. All supported Office versions are affected. Office 2016, 2013, 2010 and 2007 for Windows plus the Office compatibility pack and the standalone viewers for Word and Excel. Also patches for
Another festive season (marketing) tradition is the Pantone ‘Color of the Year’ which gets a lot of media coverage. It gives us an excuse to explain how to convert (as best you can) a Pantone color into something to use in Microsoft Office. Pantone colors don’t have a direct match
There are long-standing but hidden parts to AutoText that’s worth checking out – the field codes. Two Word field codes apply to AutoText: {AutoText } – inserts or updates the named AutoText field automatically. {AutoTextList } makes a menu of some or all AutoText entries to select from. These field
If you want to pay more for Office 365, just renew automatically when your subscription ends. There’s a cheaper way and you’ll get 13 months for less than Microsoft will charge you for 12. Here’s how: You can renew or extend your Office 365 Home or Personal account at any
If you’re interested in the hard numbers about the 2016 US election, David Wasserman @redistrict has done the work for you. Channel your inner ‘Nate Silver’ <g>. Go to https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/133Eb4qQmOxNvtesw2hdVns073R68EZx4SfCnP4IGQf8/htmlview?sle=true#gid=19 to see a ‘read only’ Google Docs worksheet showing the state-by-state results. Not visible above are columns with the total
Office 2016 for Windows will soon support scalable vector graphics (SVGs). Preview/Insiders can try them now and it’ll be available to all Office 365 subscribers in 2017. That means you’ll be able to make your documents look even better with vector-based SVG files that won’t pixelate when increased in size.
A story in the UK’s Daily Telegraph got us thinking about some of the traps when buying Microsoft Office with a new computer. The Telegraph reader bought a new computer and was told by staff that Office 2007 wasn’t supported on the new computer. The reader was sold, as a
Here’s a ‘no fuss, no muss’ way to grab the latest exchange rates and use them in Excel. No need to lookup a rate and type it in, let Excel do all that work for you. You might expect Excel to do this out of the box. After all, Microsoft
Microsoft has announced that they’ll stop updating the Outlook spam filter (“Smartscreen”) at the end of this month – on 1st Nov 2016. This might be a worry, but not a disaster, for most Outlook users and we’ll explain why. What’s Happening From 1st Nov 2016 there will be no
